Comcast Makes a Deal with BitTorrent

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Comcast Makes a Deal with BitTorrent

Comcast, under federal inquiry over its throttling of BitTorrent traffic, said Thursday it will deploy a so-called "agnostic" approach to traffic management and treat all data equally by year's end.

The company is working on developing a "network architecture that will be prepped for more and more rich content, whether it's for peer-to-peer or other types of traffic," said Tony Werner, Comcast's chief technology officer.

Comcast said it's working with BitTorrent of San Francisco, to develop a neutral traffic-management protocol, and said government intervention was unnecessary.

Digital rights groups were not so sure. They urged the Federal Communications Commission to continue its inquiry into Comcast and other internet service providers that had been delaying or blocking BitTorrent packets. The BitTorrent protocol, while having legitimate purposes, is among the technologies of choice for distributing pirated material online.

Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press who wrote the original Comcast complaint to the FCC, said Thursday's development was a result of public pressure and the "threat of FCC action."

"The issue of net neutrality is bigger than Comcast and BitTorrent," he said. "This agreement does nothing to protect the many other peer-to-peer companies from blocking, nor does it protect future innovative applications and services. Finally, it does nothing to prevent other phone and cable companies from blocking. Innovators should not have to negotiate side deals with phone and cable companies to operate without discrimination. The internet has always been a level playing field, and we need to keep it that way."

FCC commissioner Robert McDowell said "the private sector is the best forum to resolve such disputes."

Ashwin Navin, co-founder and president of BitTorrent said Comcast has agreed to increase its traffic capacity and develop new hardware. BitTorrent, he said, will alter its software to exploit Comcast's architectural changes, and make the algorithms public so other developers implementing the BitTorrent protocol can follow along.

"We're collaborating to find hardware that accelerates and improves peer-to-peer communications," he said. "Then we'll make adjustments to our software."

Comcast has been under scrutiny for months and the FCC is investigating whether Comcast was breaching the concept of net neutrality – the principle that internet providers treat traffic the same. For its part, the nation's second-largest internet service provider has said it was practicing a "reasonable traffic management" policy allowed under FCC rules.

"We never knew and don't know what content is inside, whether it's copyrighted or not copyrighted," Werner said.

The FCC has scheduled an April 17 hearing at Stanford University to discuss broadband management policy.